One-state solution to Mideast peace may arrive by default

For nearly 20 years, Israelis and Palestinians have been arguing, agonizing and negotiating over a two-state solution that would allow them to coexist side by side.

But as the peace process stalls yet again, and Jewish settlements expand on Palestinian territory, some high-profile Israelis, as well as Palestinians, have begun to think the once-unthinkable: that a one-state solution may arrive by default.

“Even those who endorsed it say the two-state solution is less and less realistic,” says Ilan Pappé of the University of Exeter, one of Israel’s controversial “new historians.”

“To be on the ground for five minutes confirms it. Whatever the solution is, it would have to include Jews and Palestinians in the same framework. Whether it’s a binational state or one democratic state is still open for discussion.”

Pappé, who is speaking Wednesday at the University of Toronto, admits that most Israelis receive the message with “angst” if not anger.

“It’s not what I want to happen, but what I believe will happen. Peace talks have been futile, and they may start again. But really significant talks based on that paradigm can never succeed.”

Pappé is not alone in his appraisal.

Two prime movers behind the two-state solution set off shock waves last month by publicly attacking the Oslo framework for peace that they helped to create in 1993.

Former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei, who worked together on Oslo, said the shelf life of the accords, which have become the bible of the peace movement, was expiring.

Although Beilin maintained that a two-state solution was still possible, he wrote an open letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asking him to disband the Palestinian Authority and set up by Oslo as an interim administration until the Palestinians gain statehood through peace negotiations.

The result would put Israel in formal control of all Palestinian territory as an occupying power, thus inviting international criticism.

One state would also leave Jewish Israelis in the minority amid the faster-growing Palestinian population. That would put Israel’s status as a Jewish state in question. And it would dissolve the Palestinian Authority’s security service, which in recent years has largely prevented attacks against Israel.

But the head of Israel’s Peace Now movement says that in spite of two decades of failure to reach a peace deal, it’s too early to throw the accords under the political bus.

“(Jewish) settlers have continued to grow and expand all around the West Bank,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, who was in Toronto earlier this week. “But the success of the settlers isn’t as big as they’d like people to think.”

Peace Now’s latest settlement survey, conducted in November, called the settler enclaves “the biggest threat to a two-state solution.” It said that 116,000 settlers in the West Bank at the beginning of the peace process have become 310,990 today.

But, said Oppenheimer, “most of the settlement blocs are close to the border and might be annexed to Israel in an agreement.”

However, settlers have gained power inside Israel’s political establishment: “You can see them more in the army, in civil society and all around the state system. They are especially involved in the (ruling) Likud party and have ministers in the government.”

With a snap election hinted this week by hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Oppenheimer says that’s likely to continue, along with the struggle by human rights groups to contain the settlements.

Polls signal that Netanyahu would be a likely winner.

“It will be harder to implement a two-state solution every day, but I don’t think you should say it’s impossible. Unfortunately, the motivation is very low.”

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Olivia Ward